`Johnny Bull` Rises Above Ordinary Tv Movie Muck

May 17, 1986|By Mark Schwed, United Press International

Twenty-five years ago this month, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow described television as a ``vast wasteland.`` Good thing he didn`t see the made-for-TV movies they`re making these days.

Too short for a miniseries and too long for a series, the TV movie was born as the launching pad for pilots, as a way to present ``exclusive world premieres`` on the cheap, and a way to fill two-hour prime-time gaps.

The made-for-TV movie caught on and now viewers are bombarded by them.

The casual viewer will know that many made-for-TV movies aren`t worth the time it takes to read the capsule description in the TV listings. That`s why when a really decent one comes along, it`s worth a salute.

Such is the case for Johnny Bull, which airs Monday night on ABC (9-11 p.m., WPLG-Ch. 10, WPEC-Ch. 12 ).

Before the opening credits finish rolling, it is clear that Johnny Bull is something different than the ordinary made-for-TV muck.

It is New York in 1959. Iris (Suzanna Hamilton), the cheery cockney bride, arrives to hook up with her ex-GI husband, Joe (Peter MacNicol). This Brit is expecting the world from the Yanks: a phone in every bathroom, a shiny white Statue of Liberty, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. But instead of the gold mine she gets the shaft -- the coal shaft, that is.

Joe lives in a dirt-poor Pennsylvania mining town where everyone has coal dust in his blood -- if they`re lucky enough to be working. He brings her home to a ramshackle wood house to meet the folks.

Daddy (Jason Robards) is a backwoods, vodka-swilling, gruff and grumpy immigrant coal miner. Mamma (Colleen Dewhurst) is long on wisdom and short on time to do all her daily chores.

Iris is shaken by everything from a dead deer hanging from the porch to the fact that Dad never leaves home without his trusty rifle.

When the son playfully tells Dewhurst that he brought home his wife to cheer her up, mother replies, ``Why you didn`t bring me an ashtray like a normal son.``

The writing is splendid. There are many dandy lines, for example: ``In England we say you`re only as old as you feel,`` the Brit says. ``If that`s the case I should have been dead a long time ago,`` Dewhurst replies.

There`s no deep moral here and not too complex a story, just what happens when a Pennsylvania coal miner`s family is introduced to a brash and cheery, twisting teen-age bride from England.